Jets are the stars at the Paris Show, but engine talk dominates

At the Paris Air Show, manufacturers and airlines returned to form after a four-year hiatus, with a flurry of orders that ran into the hundreds on the first two days. Another long-held dynamic was also on display: the mutual dependence between airframe makers and engine suppliers, with the product strategy of one side inextricably linked to that of the other. Among the hot topics: an aircraft that doesn’t even yet exist, the stretched version of the Airbus SE A220. It’s a model that would expand Airbus’s smallest jet family to three versions, keeping with the rising popularity of longer aircraft that have more capacity. But while Airbus has said it’s keen to move ahead, engine supplier Pratt & Whitney isn’t so sure. Speaking in an exclusive interview at the Paris Air show, the CEO of parent company Raytheon Technologies Corp., Greg Hayes, said building a new engine “for a relatively modest market does not make economic sense.” And while Airbus would like to see General Electric Co. consider a rival engine for the jet, Hayes said he’s skeptical they’ll bite. “Fortunately, GE has the same calculator we do,” Hayes said. “They can do math just as well as we do.” Such resistance from a crucial aircraft supplier won’t make it any easier for Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury to chart a path forward for the A220, a program he inherited when Bombardier Corp. put its ailing C-Series program up for sale. Faury, for his part, said “it makes a lot more sense to have one more child in the family.” But Hayes’ lack of enthusiasm and persistent durability issues with existing A220 power plants suggest it’s an offspring that won’t see the light of day anytime soon. Airbus and Boeing have relied on seamless collaboration with engine makers in the past to push their products. When Airbus put new, more fuel-efficient engines on its A320 model a decade ago, the so-called neo version became an instant hit and forced Boeing to follow suit. <br/>